/ ____ / / /\ / /-- /__\ /______/____ / \ ============================================================= Leonardo Electronic Almanac Volume 5, No. 6 June 1997 Craig Harris, Executive Editor Patrick Maun, Gallery Editor/Curator Craig Arko, LEA Coordinating Editor Roger Malina, LDR Editor Kasey Asberry, LDR Coordinating Editor Editorial Advisory Board Roy Ascott, Michael Naimark, Simon Penny, Greg Garvey, Joan Truckenbrod ISSN #1071-4391 ============================================================= ____________ | | | CONTENTS | |____________| INTRODUCTION < This issue > Craig Harris < LEA design statement > Patrick Maun FEATURE ARTICLES < Introduction to Consciousness Reframed > Roy Ascott PROFILES < Consciousness Reframed: art and consciousness in the post-biological era > < Intelligence, Technology & ARTificial Society Who or what are we becoming? > LEONARDO DIGITAL REVIEWS Roger Malina et al < Editorial: You ask me about the Xingo Indians... > By Roy Ascott < Book Review: Duchamp: Passim, A Marcel Duchamp Anthology, edited by Anthony Hill > Reviewed by Douglas Kahn < Video Review: There. Here: Visions from the periphery of the New World > Reviewed by Kasey Rios Asberry < Book Review: Kant After Duchamp by Thierry de Duve > Reviewed by Mark Cheetham < Exhibition Review: DISRUPTURE and CYBERHOME 2000 > Reviewed by Rapoport & Williams PUBLICATIONS < Musical Signal Processing edited by Curtis Roads, Pope, Piccialli and De Poli > < Signal Processing, Speech and Music, by Stan Tempelaars > ANNOUNCEMENTS < Solar art exhibition in Finland > < 47th Biennale of Venice > < CNMAT Summer Workshop 1997 > < Computer Music Conference-USA, The Roland Group > 1 LEONARDOELECTRONICALMANAC VOL 5 NO 6 ISSN 1071-4391 ISBN 978-0-9833571-0-0 < Six Exquisites International Sound Art Festival II (Tacoma) > ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS LEA WORLD WIDE WEB AND FTP ACCESS LEA PUBLISHING & SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION ============================================================= ________________ | | | INTRODUCTION | |________________| < This issue > Craig Harris This month Roy Ascott provides us with his introduction to his First International CAiiA Research Conference “Consciousness Reframed: art and consciousness in the post-biological era”. The list of presenters for this event is fascinating, and we have provided some selections in a PROFILE. Another PROFILE this month provides information about a collection of presentations taking place at the San Francisco State University Multimedia Studies Program. They are providing a forum for several leading people in the media arts to explore “Intelligence, Technology & ARTificial Society - Who or what are we becoming?”. And Roy Ascott finds his way into LDR this month as well in an editorial “You ask me about the Xingo Indians”, along with book, video and exhibition reviews. Patrick Maun illuminates some of the concepts underlying the recent transformation of the LEA web site. We have very positive feedback so far, and some useful and constructive suggestions. Patrick will continue to develop the LEA web site, and to inform us about the design considerations. In addition, I am happy to announce that Patrick is taking on the role of LEA Gallery Editor/Curator. He will launch the new Gallery later in July, and those of you who have visited the Gallery recently are aware that he is actively seeking new works for presentation. Contact Patrick at [email protected] to explore those possibilities. Also next issue will contain an in-depth feature of a panel/presentation exploring the impact of new media on public art, created for the annual Americans for the Arts conference. This will include profiles of artists and discussion about issues relating to documentation and dissemination. < LEA design statement > Patrick Maun The primary goals of Phase I of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac redesign were to create a framework which could encompass the large archive of existing material, as well as to allow for growth for the future. Each issue of the Almanac consists of four major areas: ARTICLES, GALLERY, PROFILES and PUBLICATIONS. Content from each issue is placed into one of these areas. Over the years, these areas have grown quite large to the point where content from past issues has far outweighed current issues of the almanac. The challenge was to create a site that presented the large amount of material on the site, as well as showcased the current issue of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac. The first step was to break the site into small, easily navigable areas. This was a fairly logical step that simply mirrored existing areas. Secondly, a color was assigned to each of four main areas, which in addition to the navigation bar found on every page, allows the user to know at all times where they are on the site. The next step was to create a site within a site that would house the current issue of the Almanac. This was accomplished through a navigation box placed on the homepage and on all pages within the current issue and allows users to quickly cross-navigate between areas of the current issue. Graphically the site was designed to be fast, clean and JUNE 1997 VOL 5 NO 6 LEONARDOELECTRONICALMANAC 2 functional. The homepage graphic borrows heavily from Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, while incorporating elements from within the site. The Almanac is fairly straightforward HTML; exploration into new technologies will take place primarily within the future gallery area. Future phases of the redesign will tackle the issue of creating a virtual gallery to showcase work and projects. This will be by far the most challenging aspect of the redesign. Bio for Patrick Maun: Patrick Maun is an installation artist, videographer and composer. He received a master’s degree from the University of Applied Art in Vienna, Austria after completing studies with Peter Weibel, Steina Vasulka and Roy Ascott. Patrick has been using the internet as artistic tool and medium since the early 80’s. His work has been shown in many festivals and exhibitions throughout the world. He has received grants from the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Austrian Ministry of Culture, the Canada Council, and has taken part in two residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Patrick works as a digital artist and designer for advertising maverick Fallon McElligott/Duffy Design. Through them, he has designed websites for several Fortune 500 companies. ============================================================= ____________ | FEATURE | | ARTICLES | |____________| < Introduction to Consciousness Reframed > Roy Ascott Roy Ascott Director, Centre for Advanced Inquiry in the Interactive Arts, University of Wales College, Newport Caerleon Campus P.O. Box 179 Newport, Wales NP6 1YG E-mail: [email protected] http://caiiamind.nsad.newport.ac.uk/ Interactions between art, science and technology are leading to the emergence of new cultural forms, behaviors and values. It is within the field of Consciousness that this is most marked and at the same time least understood. I have convened this conference in order to open up informed discussion of the issues this raises and to examine what might broadly be called the technoetic principle in art. Our call for papers, issued largely on the Internet, brought in some 148 proposals, the overall originality and excellence of which enabled us to select nearly one hundred for presentation at the Conference. The number, diversity and quality of these papers should leave us in no doubt that “Consciousness” is indeed high on the agenda of artists today just as it commands the attention of contemporary philosophers, scientists and humanists. Not only many disciplines but many cultures are involved, with speakers and delegates to the Conference coming from Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ecuador, France, Germany, Holland, Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK, and the USA, as well as from our ‘virtual community’ of CAiiA researchers based around the world. By bringing Art into conjunction with Consciousness we are highlighting a trajectory in Western art that has its roots in the very earliest part of this century, exemplified by the conceptual impetus of Duchamp, the spiritual ambitions of Kandinsky and the psychic urgency of Boccioni. At the same time, we recognize the influence on contemporary art of other cultural traditions, past and present, occidental and oriental, which seek 3 LEONARDOELECTRONICALMANAC VOL 5 NO 6 ISSN 1071-4391 ISBN 978-0-9833571-0-0 to understand the mystery of consciousness and to grapple creatively with its phenomena. 20th century art has been in many ways an attempt to make the invisible visible, to foster new processes of perception and cognition, to cultivate what we might call ‘emergent mind’. Technology, creatively and wisely applied, assists us in creating new ideas of self and society, just as the physical and biological sciences provide us with new models and metaphors of being, or as we might prefer to say, becoming. Telematic connectivity, the associative structures of hypermedia, virtual reality and artificial life, are just some of the new environments in which art and mind are explored and extended. We call this momentum post-biological, not to deny Nature its status but to signal the potency of these new technologies of mediation, construction and transformation in our understanding of consciousness and our perceptions of reality. In seeking to provide a forum from which new ideas, practices and values can emerge, Consciousness Reframed is consistent